Chapter 71
Chapter 71: Together
“How did you turn goldfire spirit power into lightning spirit power?” Juan Bu suddenly demanded.
“What?” Hu Qing’s mind couldn’t keep up.
“When you fought Zhe Liu, your spiritual power became the Thunder Dragon’s lightning spirit power.”
Hu Qing’s eyes widened. “That was the Thunder Dragon converting it.”
“It isn’t a real dragon,” Juan Bu snapped. “It’s your artifact. A bound artifact. Your spiritual power can turn into lightning spirit power because of you, not because of it.”
Did she think anyone could control a weapon like that? If the Thunder Dragon belonged to someone else, would it still be able to transform their power into its lightning?
“I—I don’t know how!” Hu Qing stammered as thunder swallowed her voice. Lightning flooded the world with blinding white, and her spiritual power surged out instinctively to resist.
The lightning tore through her spiritual power, trying to shred her meridians.
By reflex, Hu Qing guided a thread of lightning inward, drawing it through her meridians the way she had learned to do after being struck so many times. It was ferocious, but it was only a wisp. Wrapped by the flood of her own power, it finally flowed into her dantian.
Then it dissolved.
It was like tossing a fish into the sea—no matter how hard it thrashed, it couldn’t break free, and before long it simply vanished into the vastness.
Hu Qing stared, stunned. “What was that?”
“No idea,” Juan Bu said. “But you can use it.”
Use it.
That thought snapped everything into place.
Hu Qing dropped into a cross-legged seat. She stopped dodging and bracing and simply opened herself to the tribulation. When lightning struck, she grabbed it with her spiritual power and dragged it straight into her dantian.
Juan Bu’s mouth twitched. She didn’t need to be quite this reckless.
Lightning hammered down in a constant roar. Each bolt exploded like it had fallen into deep water—splashing, boiling, and then sinking away.
Three techniques spun at once. Realizing her dantian could absorb lightning, Hu Qing’s blood ran hot with exhilaration. She immediately diverted some of it to temper her body.
Muscle, bone, organs—she wanted to forge herself into an artifact. The pure destructive force ripped open flesh and reforged her frame, and then a searing agony suddenly flared in her right palm.
Hu Qing jerked her hand open. Fire burned in her palm, and the pain was something she had never known—worse than flame, worse than lightning, as if both her soul and her flesh were burning together.
She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached, refusing to cry out. Her gaze locked on her palm as a black pattern burned itself into existence.
A rune.
Slay.
Juan Bu saw it too, shock flashing through him. Was this the price for borrowing the power of heaven and earth?
The burning pain was so fierce Hu Qing barely noticed the lightning anymore. Transparent flame crawled over the slaying rune, eating at something deeper than skin.
Let it burn.
Borrowed was borrowed. She accepted it. She didn’t regret it.
At that moment, Xue Sha Pearl shot back into her sea of consciousness, still crackling with stray lightning. The Devil Emperor Token stayed as far away as it could.
High above, the Little Sun twitched. The lightning clinging to Xue Sha Pearl peeled off as if yanked by an invisible hook and flew toward Scorching Sun Blaze.
A tiny hand reached out from within the Little Sun, grabbed the lightning, shook it playfully, and then gulped it down.
Oh. This tasted good.
Hu Qing felt a portion of her spiritual power split off and rise into her sea of consciousness.
So it did eat.
Her sea of consciousness was steady, unshaken, so she forced herself to ignore it. The burning in her right hand demanded everything.
If her soul burned away… would she still be Hu Qing?
All she had done was kill Zhe Liu—one minor immortal, and not even a decent one. Was that worth this kind of punishment?
From the outside, Hu Qing looked terrifying. She sat on the ground and took lightning bare-handed. A pillar of light swallowed her until even her shadow was hard to make out.
The powerhouses watched in disbelief. Nascent Soul cultivators stared with awe. The disciples below could only worship.
Not afraid at all. Not even a little.
Just then, a white figure streaked toward the tribulation field.
Yu Liu Ya flashed forward and blocked the path, eyes widening. “Shui Xin?”
“Move,” Shui Xin said, sharp with urgency. “I’m going over to undergo tribulation.”
Yu Liu Ya blinked. “What?”
Shui Xin’s voice was tight with frustration. “Her range is too big. I can’t get out of it. I might as well come and undergo tribulation with her.”
Two people undergoing tribulation together—what good could that do? They’d agreed earlier that when his tribulation came, he’d head far away from Zhaohua Sect, outside Baoping Ward, so they wouldn’t interfere with each other.
But look at the sky. It was covered.
Did he have time to run ten thousand miles? Even if he escaped, would any other tribulation cloud bother to show up just for him?
So he might as well do it here.
Yu Liu Ya mechanically moved aside. Shui Xin shot past. Yu Liu Ya called after him, “Do you have to pick this moment?”
As if Shui Xin had any say.
He stopped far from Hu Qing, scanned the situation, and decided not to greet her. He took out a formation plate and began setting up an array.
The moment the formation plate appeared, the Buddha Seal flew out as well, streaking toward the sky.
Shui Xin lunged to grab it and missed. Only then did he see Bai Wen and the Thunder Dragon still being struck above.
And the lightning was red.
Red lightning… artifact tribulation lightning?
The Buddha Seal had already wedged itself between Bai Wen and the Thunder Dragon like a shameless freeloader, clearly trying to get struck too. Shui Xin cursed under his breath and focused on his own array.
The onlookers were stunned. Another one?
So the tribulation clouds really weren’t just for Hu Qing.
Shui Xin’s array was completely different from hers. Hu Qing’s array resisted and consumed the heavenly lightning. Shui Xin’s array guided lightning into his body in steady stages, letting him temper himself as a body cultivator.
“Look!” someone shouted. “His lightning is also three-in-one!”
At the center vortex, the red lightning emerged painfully slowly. Bai Wen, the Thunder Dragon, and the Buddha Seal took turns stepping forward to be struck, shedding charred fragments without retreating.
The Buddha Seal was pitifully small compared to the other two. Even at its largest, it looked like a child wedged between giants.
After three red bolts, the Buddha statue on the seal was flung toward the Thunder Dragon. Its empty grasping hand brushed the dragon’s tail.
The Thunder Dragon whipped its tail and knocked it away. Get lost. I don’t belong to you.
The Buddha Seal spun, bumped into Bai Wen, and got slapped away again. Don’t come here!
No one on the ground noticed their little squabble. Everyone was too busy counting.
Eighty-one three-in-one bolts.
And then—nothing.
“So… it’s over?” Chan Ming craned his neck, eyes straining.
Without the lightning, Hu Qing’s side fell dark, lit only by the fading glow from Shui Xin’s field. It took Chan Ming a moment to make out her silhouette again—head intact, body intact. She was probably still alive.
Normally, after tribulation, laws would descend and spiritual rain would fall. But someone was still undergoing tribulation, so everything hung in suspense.
What would happen next?
Boom.
Boom.
Two explosions sounded from different directions.
The Zhaohua Sect Ancestors’ faces changed sharply. Two figures appeared at once, arriving like arrows, each staring at the other and then sweeping their surroundings. Both looked up at the sky in the same breath.
The next second, they moved like lightning, each taking a distant corner and beginning to set up an array.
Yu Liu Ya swayed, dizzy with disbelief.
Mahayana Ancestors… were about to undergo tribulation.